August 29th 2016 - One day I received a call from a harried mom about her son who had been tormented for the past 17 years. Her son had been in and out of psychiatric institutions quite a bit when this affliction first appeared at the age of 17. John (not his real name) was 34 now and had been on disability for many years.

He was not able to hold a job and participate in life as most 34 year olds. He lived on his own, had a bus pass and did get around, but spirits and one in particular were always bothering him and had consumed his life.

Just to step back for one moment and talk about possession. I know to many this sounds like Hollywood and is only in the movies, but the belief, knowledge and experience of spirits, entities taking ‘possession’ of a person has existed in ancient and present day cultures.

There are many ways that this can come forth through no fault of the person afflicted. They are in the wrong place at the wrong time; a curse is placed upon them or in John’s case, asking to connect to the other side without protection or knowledge of what they were doing.
Possession can look like many things. A person can be so consumed that they appear insane. A person could be having ‘bad luck’, or could develop an illness. A person may just have a vacant look in their eyes as though they are not home.

In the case of this 34 year-old man, he was a 17-year-old boy who had a Ouija board and was playing around with it in his bedroom. The next thing that he and his mother knew was that he was acting very strangely, unable to control his thoughts and actions and feeling the presence of a being that was tormenting him.

Of course the solution for most is that he is crazy. It is an imbalance in his chemical system; so let’s drug him to the correct balance and put him in an institution.

17 years later John was on the doorstep of my office with his mother seeking help. As he entered and sat down, I could immediately see this black feeling male energy sitting on his left shoulder just laughing at him, telling John that he could not do anything that he would always have control over him and just laughing and taunting this young man.

I listed to John’s story of his life, and then I mentioned this entity that I saw laughing at him. He immediately had the look in his eyes of connection to me. Finally, someone else that saw and heard what he had been dealing with for half his life.
We talked more, and I let him know that we could get this entity to leave. I also wanted to let him know that he needed to want to have this gone. I needed his assistance to not call it back or want to stay in possession. He was very excited about the possibilities of living without this other thing always intruding and defining his life.

His mother was present, and I let her know that just removing this entity was not the end of this healing for her son. Having something consume one for close to half your life or even if it was only 6 months, there are areas that need to be worked with, filled back up and nourished for health.

Over the next week or so, I worked with to remove this being who had developed tentacles like attachments to John. After the complete removal of this entity, the young man was in new territory. He had no real memory or feeling of living without this thing. He was rudderless.

His mother called me a week or so after he had become clear to let me know that John was still talking with this being. Asking what is going on. I told her that her son was doing two things. One was he was continuing to manipulate her by telling her that this thing was still around so that she would still have to baby him and feel guilty and give in to his demands.

Secondly, it was like losing part of his identity; so he was going to for a while try to call it back to keep the norm that he had grown up with. I told her that within a couple of weeks that he would tire of acting this out and would admit that it was gone, but this is when the next phase of the healing would need to take place.
It was going to be more difficult, because it was going to take an active desire and action on John’s part to heal. He was still in a sense a teenage boy in a 34-year-old body.

John was going to have to grow up.

This is where my relationship with the client, and his mother ended. I had given John some homework to do to nurture him and instructions for his mom on how to be with him to support this healing work that he was about to undertake.

Through repeated attempts and conversations, John was not able or willing to do the work. He fell back on his woe is me that his mother allowed. John’s mental health doctor of many years enabled John to continue his patterns, because “it was going to be too stressful for him” to do the homework. John continued on his different forms of medication prescribed by the doctor.

Last I talked with the mom; she was confusion and loss. Her son does not have this entity in his life anymore, but he also is aimless and using his past problem to define his future.

This example of working with possession is a bit more dramatic than most, but the commonality is that people become possessed for a reason. This can be an invitation intended or not, or allowed to happen due to some dis-ease. It is not just the removal, but also the bringing back to health of the individual that is necessary for people to be fully present and active in their lives.